Not a historical epic about ancient Switzerland, Helvetica is a new documentary film about the ubiquitous typeface that can be spotted just about everywhere. For example, some common brands in Thailand, Toyota and Nestlé, just to name a couple, use the Helvetica font for their brandnames.

Helvetica is being used for this blog posting, when normally I would just use the default font, Georgia.

The documentary directed by Gary Hustwit to mark the typeface's 50th anniversary, takes a look at how Helvetica was made and how it has become so widely used. Being a lifelong user of typefaces, I think it will make for essential and interesting viewing.

The film is showing at 5pm on Saturday at SF World Cinemas in CentralWorld as part of the Bangkok Design Festival. The film will also be shown at the upcoming World Film Festival of Bangkok.